In their first feature-length documentary, Waking Hours [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Federico Cammarata, Filipp…
scheda film], Federico Cammarata and Filippo Foscarini are surrounded by forest. In the absolute darkness, different shapes start to appear. Some of them belong to smugglers, patiently waiting for another group of Afghan “passengers” hoping to cross the border. We spoke to the directorial duo about their Venice International Film Critics’ Week entry.

Cineuropa: In Waking Hours, you have to wait around 40 minutes for the first close-up. Why did you want to keep viewers in the dark (literally)?
Federico Cammarata: This film was very, very hard to shoot. There was a police raid on the camps only the second time we went there – all of the people we were filming suddenly disappeared. We had to build it around the material we had, so that was the practical reason, but we also wanted to get closer to them very slowly. It really reflects our experience there.

How did you even end up making this film? There are many documentaries about the refugee experience, but you took this topic somewhere else.
FC: The reason why we were in that area, the northern side of Serbia, was because we wanted to film a natural phenomenon that happens right there on the border with Hungary. It’s connected to the insects that live there. They come from the river, where they live for three years, and then they spend an hour flying. They reproduce, and then they die. The river carries them away. There was something poetic about it.

At first, we weren’t aware we were in such a sensitive place. We discovered the forest was full of people – we were even stopped by a gang of people smugglers. What started as a very brief trip turned into a month.

Shooting at night makes sense – that’s when everybody’s moving around. But were you worried about how it was going to influence the shoot?
FC: It was a dangerous situation, and we had to make our decisions very quickly. We just went with it, but of course we had problems in the editing room later on – the hardest part was finding a way to edit this “black hole”-like footage.

The truth is, it was safer for us to be there at night. The police weren’t there, and they would gather around a source of light or a fire. Some didn’t want to be filmed; others were sceptical. But we developed a relationship with them over time. They understood we weren’t there to harm them. Still, it’s a mystery to me why they let us in, because what they do isn’t exactly legal.

Filippo Foscarini: We chose to leave the European border, the police and “the passengers” unseen, even though it’s an essential part of the film. Smuggling always involves partial visibility, and the documentary embodied this state. We immerse the audience in a dark forest that resembles a labyrinth, where it is easy to lose oneself.

It actually works in your favour that you don’t show the usual scenes: interactions with the police, rejection by the locals... You create a separate, almost unrecognisable universe.
FC: At first, we were quite ignorant. We didn’t even know the difference between people smugglers and migrants. But we don’t get to see smugglers that often, because they are hard to find and to meet. We just wanted to understand who these people were. We were scared at the beginning. We didn’t know them, and there were gangs fighting each other. It was mid-2023, and in that period, it was a peak for human presence in that area. You would hear gunshots. I think this film reflects our fear.

FF: Compared to our previous experiences, we were constantly on alert. But inside the forest, we actually managed to create, together with them, a fragile bubble that took us far from this violent reality. Borders, by their very nature, are places of cruelty and danger.

Have you always worked together?
FC: We met in film school and made our graduation film together. We are both directors, but we also work separately: I take care of the images, and Filippo records the sound. This film wouldn’t have happened if we’d had to shoot with a large crew. This way, we were able to take care of everything ourselves, basically. We would just go there, not looking threatening at all – just some random Italian guys in the forest. That’s probably why it worked.

FF: It’s like working in a lab – it’s not an intellectual process at all. On other projects, we had time to do research and to run tests in order to understand how to proceed. Now, there was no time for it. It’s important to recognise that this was never an “official” film. Just like “the passengers” and the smugglers, we weren’t authorised to be in that shadowy place. It helped us forge a connection, however. We were vulnerable as well.